Froome wins Le Tour stage 17 to Chorges

Chris Froome has taken his third stage win of the 100th Tour de France to strengthen his hold on the yellow jersey, edging out main rival Alberto Contador by nine seconds in today's individual time trial to Chorges.

The weather held off just enough for Froome to beat the Spaniard Contador, who had taken a much more aggressive approach to the mountainous time trial route on slick roads with rain falling intermittently.

With Bauke Mollema well off the pace, Contador moves into second place but his deficit to Froome now stands at four minutes 34 seconds heading into tomorrow's much-anticipated double ascent of the Alpe d'Huez.

Dan Martin finished in 32nd place, 3m22s off Froome's time. Overall, Martin lies in tenth place, 12m50s off the lead.

Nicolas Roche finshed 150th, 7m13s off the lead. He lies 34th overall, 47m25s behind in the general classification.

The weather had threatened to play a major role as it began to rain on the mountain tops midway through the day, with a few claps of thunder heard.

The worst of it had been forecast for around half an hour before Froome was due to start - the last of today's riders - but while Froome was clearly being careful on the greasy surfaces, he was not majorly troubled.

Contador was in attack mode, frequently out of the saddle and ahead of Froome through all three intermediate checkpoints.

But where Contador stuck with his road bike throughout, Froome had changed to his time trial bike midway through the stage and was 20 seconds quicker than his rival over the final 13 kilometres.

As well as increasing his overall lead, the victory makes Froome only the second Briton to have won more than two stages in any one Tour, with Mark Cavendish the other.

There were clear reminders of the dangers posed by the course and the conditions on it.

Jean-Christopher Peraud of AG2R La Mondiale began the stage despite suffering a small fracture to his clavicle when he came off during a practice ride of the route this morning.

He then crashed again two kilometres from the finish, forced to abandon the Tour from ninth place overall.

The same corner saw Mollema crash into the barriers but remain upright, while Roman Kreuziger had a major wobble before his team-mate Contador took it much more carefully.

With the weather easing before the main contenders attacked the course, the lead changed several times late on.

Alejandro Valverde had sent the standard which Contador beat by less than a second before in turn being trumped by Froome.

Mollema could only manage 11th place, two minutes nine seconds behind Froome's time of 51m 33sec, and drops to fourth overall behind Contador and Joaquim Rodriguez.

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